Giving it Away: Notes from the A29 Bootcamp | Part 1

"You preserve the gospel by giving it away." —D.A. Carson

These were the final words of D.A. Carson’s session titled ‘Preserving the Gospel’ and were the words that have been imprinted on my heart and resonating through my mind since then. In the same spirit, I hope to preserve all of the things that God spoke to me during the Acts 29 Bootcamp by approaching them with a generous heart. I undeservedly received the gospel and I don’t want to walk through its implications unwittingly. As a grateful beggar telling other beggars where to find bread (another Carson quote, ha!), I offer all of this to you. I’m not the best note-taker in the universe, but whatever I have is yours.

Better still, Acts 29 will be posting the audio/video from this bootcamp. Whatever they have is yours, too. 

This first blog is from the first session at the Bootcamp: "Gospel Transformation" presented by D.A. Carson. Please feel free to comment and question—this stuff is best fleshed out in community!

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It goes without saying (or at least it should): there is no gospel-centered church planter, no gospel-centered mission, no gospel-centered anything apart from gospel transformation. I have to let myself sit there for a minute. Nothing that I write is relevant at all apart from the fact that I have been transformed. None of this information will amount to anything in my life or yours unless we have undergone transformation, utterly and entirely. My biggest fear in arriving, experiencing, departing and now processing this past weekend is that I will have heard much but not known much... learned much but not loved much... affirmed much but not believed much. It is fitting that Carson decided to start here—because without being born again, we will never live.

Carson exegetes with swift, exacting, ninja-like precision. Driscoll is right to call him yoda-smart. Plus, he’s Canadian—and I will always have a special affinity for all things Canada. But beyond this—as one of his colleagues put it—he has a gracious heart. It was an honor to sit under a teacher whose obvious gifts are so obviously submitted to Christ and saturated by grace. 

Overall, I was struck by the way that Carson did not shy away from the heavy lifting in this passage. Consequently, I was admonished to put down my own 5 pound weights start doing some bench pressing. What I mean when I say “heavy lifting” is this. Carson took the time to carefully connect the dots of Jesus’ statements in order to paint the whole picture—he didn’t settle for a kitschy motel portrait of Jesus as sage. Sometimes, when I read Jesus words, I settle. I settle for yesterday’s insights, trying to be satisfied by yesterday’s bread, only to be left emaciated. I hopscotch from verse to verse without looking to see how each one builds upon the last. I say this to my shame. Rather than doing the work of connecting the dots, pleading with the Spirit to give me wisdom on how Jesus’ thoughts come together to form the whole, I just get lazy. I’m glad to have been shaken from sleep and humbled that I’m forgiven for this—now to stay awake, by grace.

There were some key points for me in this session. One, that we need new life—not new laws. Nicodemus, in his great presumption, was looking to Jesus as just another teacher, as another doer, not as a savior. To this, Jesus seems to say, “Nicodemus, you don’t need me to teach you. You can’t bear the weight of the law you do have, let alone any other that I could heap on you. You need me to redeem you, to give you new birth, to give you a new beginning that will never end. You think you see and understand, but you do not... because your heart is unbelieving. You ask how a man can be born again, even when he is old. Do you not know that the new birth I offer is real? You can be made new, despite all the baggage, sin and cynicism that accompanies adulthood. You can start over.” Two, that we can only look to the solution that God has provided for salvation. Jesus likens himself to the serpent lifted up in the wilderness, which is—humanly speaking—an unlikely candidate for salvation. Who fights a serpent by looking at a fake serpent? Who conquers death with death? The Father’s wisdom is so far beyond our own. Look to and believe in no other solution for your sin and death other than the one given by the Father.